Would You Drink a Cocktail Made from Kitchen Scraps?

"Would you drink a cocktail made from day-old pastries? A martini made from leftover feta brine? With over half of US food waste coming from the food industry, bartenders are getting crafty with solutions to help the situation. Fruit pulp, vegetable rinds, meat scraps-even yesterday's croissants-are moving from the kitchen to the bar, creating wild and wonderful cocktails with less landfill waste. But do upcycled cocktails make a difference?"

"Sitting above the bar at N/Soto in Los Angeles, jars of crystalized fruit make up the laboratory of Reed Windle, where stone fruit scraps evolve into shōchū cocktails. "It's a symbiotic relationship," he says of his cocktail lab. The Izakaya atmosphere, a more casual spot from the team behind Michelin-starred N/Naka, encourages Windle to play, fermenting scraps of fruits used in N/Soto's small plates, combining them with shōchū for up to six months, depending on the ripeness of the fruit, for his Chu-Hi cocktail."

Bars and bartenders are repurposing kitchen leftovers—fruit pulp, vegetable rinds, meat scraps and day-old pastries—into cocktails to cut landfill waste and create new flavors. Over half of US food waste originates in the food industry, prompting inventive solutions in bars. Reed Windle ferments stone fruit scraps with shōchū for months, tracks experiments, and coordinates ingredient choices with the kitchen to minimize waste. Including the bar program in the restaurant menu fosters a symbiotic relationship between drinks and dishes. Kenzo Han uses scraps both for sustainability and flavor, assisting menu substitutions and leveraging fat drippings to add nutty layers.

Read at Bon Appetit